This invention relates generally to an improved pavement saw and vacuum system, and more particularly to a vacuum system attached to a pavement saw for automatically transporting pavement cuttings from a saw to a transport vehicle.
Pavement cutting equipment is commonly used to slice sections of concrete and asphalt roadbeds for multiple purposes. For example, the installation of a water main or similar pipeline along an existing street would require cutting a slot in a street bed to permit digging a trench for the pipeline. This is but one example of many such operations used in street construction projects.
The slotting operation is commonly done with a portable diamond circular bladed saw. In order to keep the diamond blade cool during cutting, water is commonly feed around the blade from a tank located on a truck. The concrete or asphalt cuttings for the pavement, which are typically very fine granular particles, mix with the cooling water to form a slurry which remains along the cut as the saw is advanced.
Environmental requirements today require that the cuttings slurry, which can either drain or be washed by rain into public storm drains, be removed from the street during the sawing operation. This is commonly done with a standard shop type wet vacuum. Typically, the sawing operation requires two people, one to operate the saw and one to vacuum the cuttings and empty the vacuum's tank into a larger tank located on a truck for hauling the cuttings to a disposal site. A disadvantage of such a system is that the wet vacuum typically only holds a small amount of cuttings. As such, relatively frequently the wet vacuum becomes full from its collection of cuttings and must be manually taken to and lifted into a collection tank mounted on a truck to empty the collected cuttings.
Accordingly a need exists for a pavement saw and vacuum assembly that simultaneously picks up the cuttings as they are created, and transfers them to a tank located on a transport vehicle for hauling the cuttings to a disposal site. A need also exists for reducing the sawing crew from two people to one person thereby saving considerable cost.